Note: This article was originally published on Monday, April 30, 2017 at 10:44 in the evening and has been updated.
Whenever I travel and find myself in a popular point of interest or shopping area whose target market is tourists and visitors, I pass by a rack of postcards and wonder to myself: “Who actually sends postcards anymore?”
Does Anyone Send Postcards Anymore?
Postcards were still a way of letting people know that you were thinking of them while you were away from home when I first started traveling. Calling someone via telephone was still expensive; and there were not as many ways to communicate then as there are today…
…but unless you give the postcard to someone in person after your travels have been completed, sending one requires paying for a postage stamp, which may be purchased on site or could possibly require a trip to the post office to have it sent. Furthermore, the postcard usually requires between a couple of days to a full week to be delivered.
You can now use technology to instantly communicate with someone almost anywhere in the world at little or no cost, thanks to the latest in technology which continuously evolves. E-mail messages, instant messaging, social media, and text and video chat can all be employed at no charge in many cases.
In fact, one of those electronic methods of free or discounted communication will disappear on Monday, May 5, 2025 when Skype is permanently retired by Microsoft.
Moreover, photographs and videos can be sent within seconds of taking them — creating customized instant electronic postcards of sorts that can be sent to one person or groups of people. The photographs and videos can even be custom edited on the spot in minutes before sending them — and they are almost always more personal than a photograph or graphic that is on a postcard.
Final Boarding Call
One minor negative aspect of electronic communications is that the recipient does not receive a postmark, which some people consider to be similar to an official stamp in a passport.
I personally cannot remember the last time I sent a postcard, as I have instead picked up small souvenirs for intended recipients. Both methods suggest that one person is thinking of another person while traveling. For at least that reason, I would not be surprised if there are many people who still send postcards today…
…but I did not see anyone look at or touch any of the postcards in the rack shown in the photograph at the top of this article…
All photographs ©2017 by Brian Cohen.
